New Gallery Exhibitions at the Arvada Center

ARVADA, CO – The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities currently has three new visual arts exhibitions on display in the Center’s three gallery spaces until March 30, 2008—Uzi Buzgalo, more big BEAUTIFUL THINGS and Michael McClung’s Watch Your Step: Sidewalks. These exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Uzi Buzgalo, on display in the Upper Gallery until March 30, celebrates hearing-impaired peoples’ “picturesque” mode of communication and how important hands, rather than voices, are to personal expression. This exhibition features three-dimensional/altar-like mixed media portraits of famous deaf and hearing-impaired figures throughout history. Uzi is one of sixty artists featured in Deborah M. Sonnenstrahl’s award-winning book Deaf Artists in America: Colonial to Contemporary.

Michael McClung’s Watch Your Step: Sidewalks is a photographic and lost shoe installation that examines the everyday life of a sidewalk, from shadows cast over cracks, patterns and debris to the social, economic and emotional imprints left behind. This exhibition is on display in the Theater Gallery through March 23.

more big BEAUTIFUL THINGS, featuring Justin Beard, Emmett Culligan, Virginia Folkestad, Chris Lavery and Linda Foster, is on display in the Lower Gallery until March 30. Organized by Gallery Director/Curator Jerry Allen Gilmore, this exhibition examines some of the most promising and progressive artists working in contemporary sculpture. You will encounter sculpture in tranquil poses, as well as monumental, magical and massive in power, geometric structures of abstract language and straightforward convolutions reshaped and revitalized from lost and found materials, including stone, steel, rubber, wood and paper. Captivating and enticing, this exhibition is only limited by your imagination.

Also going on at the Arvada Center is a Reacquaintance with the Center’s Sculpture Garden, including the work of John Van Alstine, Bryan Andrews, Angelo di Benedetto, James Buchman, William Burgess, Robert Coogan, Clarice Dreyer, Bill Gian, Jim Green, Lynne Hull, Charles Parson, Carl Reen and John Young. The Sculpture Garden features twenty-two permanent and temporary pieces, as well as the “Dirt Wall” by Vito Acconci, a public art piece that winds its way through both the interior and exterior of the Center.

The Arvada Center galleries are free and open to the public Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; and Sunday, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The galleries are also open through intermission on evenings with main stage presentations. Free docent-led tours of the Arvada Center’s gallery exhibitions and history museum are available to groups of ten or more. To schedule a tour, call the Arvada Center’s gallery/museum tour line at (720) 898-7255.

The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities is one of the metro area’s largest cultural attractions, devoted to all aspects of the arts. It is generously supported by the Scientific & Cultural Facilities District (SCFD) and located two and a half miles north of Interstate 70 on Wadsworth Blvd. For more information, call the Arvada Center box office at (720) 898-7200 or visit arvadacenter.org.

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